Computer systems are becoming increasingly pervasive in our society, including everything from small handheld electronic devices, such as personal data assistants and cellular phones, to application-specific electronic components, such as set-top boxes and other consumer electronics, to medium-sized mobile and desktop systems to large workstations and servers. As computers become ubiquitous, computer security issues have become more important. Ways of deterring theft of computers are evolving to meet the challenges posed by the portable nature of many computers. Various methods of user authentication may be used to provide security and to deter theft. These methods include passwords.
In some computer systems, upon turning on the computer, the computer may request the user for authentication by way of a password. Once the user types in the password, the password may be passed to the hard drive of the computer system. After being received by the drive, the password is used to unlock the drive. Once unlocked, the operating system (OS) stored in the drive is loaded into the memory subsystem of the computer and the boot process proceeds.
There are many problems with this type of authentication process, and the present invention is intended to addresses some of these problems.